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Interesting Facts about English

1. The most common letter in English is "e".

2. The most common vowel in English is "e", followed by "a".

3. The most common consonant in English is "r", followed by "t".

4.Every syllable in English must have a vowel (sound). Not all syllables have consonants.

5.Only two English words in current use end in "-gry". They are "angry" and "hungry".

6.The word "bookkeeper" (along with its associate "bookkeeping") is the only unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters. Other such words, like "sweet-toothed", require a hyphen to be readily readable.

7.The word "triskaidekaphobia" means "extreme fear of the number 13". This superstition is related to "paraskevidekatriaphobia", which means "fear of Friday the 13th".

8.More English words begin with the letter "s" than with any other letter.

9. A preposition is always followed by a noun (ie noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund).

10.The word "uncopyrightable" is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.

11.A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a "pangram".

12.  The following sentence contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." This sentence is often used to test typewriters or keyboards.

13.The only word in English that ends with the letters "-mt" is "dreamt" (which is a variant spelling of "dreamed") - as well of course as "undreamt" :)

14.A word formed by joining together parts of existing words is called a "blend" (or, less commonly, a "portmanteau word"). Many new words enter the English language in this way. Examples are "brunch" (breakfast + lunch); "motel" (motorcar + hotel); and "guesstimate" (guess + estimate). Note that blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form when two whole words join together, for example: website, blackboard, darkroom.

15.The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta.

16.The dot over the letter "i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot".

17.In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.

18.In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".

19.If we place a comma before the word "and" at the end of a list, this is known as an "Oxford comma" or a "serial comma". For example: "I drink coffee, tea, and wine."

20.Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas (but note that clothing words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in "trouser pocket").

21.The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. "I am."

22.The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning "the king is helpless".

23. We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

24.The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".

25.The only planet not named after a god is our own, Earth. The others are, in order from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, [Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

Rules for effective communication

Have you been wondering how to put together an impressively-phrased PowerPoint presentation?

Have you been wondering how to compose an e-mail that captures your strategies and goals effectively?

It is time to do something about it.

As a young professional in today's global business world, it is imperative that you are competent in both oral as well as written communication.

Important forms of oral communication at the workplace include:

• Building interpersonal relationships.
• Giving presentations and debating viewpoints effectively.

You need to master oral skills for both in-person and over-the-phone interactions.

Similarly, important written communication includes:

• Writing professional e-mails (sans SMS slang).
• Putting together concise reports.
• Creating visually powerful Powerpoint presentations.

And the key to acing oral and written communication is to spruce up your communication skills. And it is a lot easier than you think.

Here are some easy tips to do it on your own:

1. Improve pronunciation and diction

There are a few tricks to making a vernacular accent more globally understandable.

~ Try making sure that 'air' comes out of your mouth when saying the letters, 'T, P, K' and the sound 'Ch'.

~ Focus on elongating your vowel sounds. This will also automatically slow down your rate of speech.

~ Sing English songs out loud!

~ Watch news shows on channels like CNN and BBC.

~ The web site www.m-w.com is great for pronunciation help.

~ I would also suggest buying books on pronunciation and language that come with audio cassettes.

A good book that I found really useful was Better English Pronunciation by J D O'Connor. It is part of the Cambridge series, and some of those books come with cassettes.

2. Spruce up your writing skills

~ Believe it or not, you have to Read More!

~ Well-written magazines, like The Economist and India Today, are great to read not only to improve language skills but also to learn more about the world.

~ In terms of books, read what interests you. The basic goal is to read as much as you can.

There are a plethora of good authors who are popular today. Some good writers whose language is easy to follow include Vikram Seth, Jhumpa Lahiri, Paulo Coelho, J D Salinger, Albert Camus and Roald Dahl.

~ People tend to forget basic grammar when writing e-mails. An e-mail is nothing more than a letter which is sent electronically.

Make sure salutations and content are professional. Use special phrases when attaching documents. For example, "Please find attached with this e-mail a report on..." This helps you sound professional.

3. Five exercises to practise every day!

i. Pretend you are a newscaster and read out the newspaper to your mirror.

ii. Do not read local newspapers. Focus on national newspapers.

iii. While reading a book, underline all the words you do not know. Look them up in the dictionary.

iv. Make a list of these words, and make sure you use at least five of them in a conversation during the day.

v. Most important, make an effort to speak in English to your friends and family.

 Keep posting comments/Suggestions...

HAPPY LEARNING!! 

7 Tips for learning an English Word a day

1. Use the new word in a sentence

After you have read the word and understood its meaning, use that new word in your own sentence. It is best to try and create a sentence that has some type of relationship or connection with your life.

2. Look for grammatical variations of the word

Look for the different ways (grammatical forms) the word can appear. For example if the word to suspect (a verb) is given to you, you can look for its noun form (suspicion), its adjective form (suspicious) etc. Suspect can also be a noun (a suspect). Remember that not all words have all grammatical forms. It pays to have a good English dictionary to help you with this.

Once you have the different forms of the new word, you can then try and make a sentence with each one.

3. Do Word Associations

Try and associate the word with other things (like a mind map). Not only will it help you remember the new word but it will also increase your knowledge (vocabulary) of other things associated with the word.

For example if you have the new word CAR (a noun),

Think of nouns associated with the word (parts of a car: windscreen, steering wheel…)

Think of verbs associated with the word (to Brake, to accelerate, to crash…)

Think of adjectives to describe it (Fast, rusty… )

Think of examples of the word (Limousine, Jeep…)

If the word is an adjective for example BIG

Think of synonyms or words with a similar meaning (large, enormous, huge…)

Think of antonyms or opposites (small, tiny…)

Think of examples of the adjective (Big: Elephant, a continent, Jupiter…)

4. Carry a list or a notepad with you

Write the new word and its meaning (and maybe an example too) in a small notepad that you can carry with you and read whenever you have a spare moment (or some people keep them in their smartphone). This can be read while you are sitting on a bus, on the underground/subway, or while you are in a waiting room. This will help you see the words more than once and will help them stick in your mind.

5. Make flash cards

Make little cards with each new word on one side and the meaning of that word on the other side. Put them on the ground and if the meaning is face up, then try and think of the word. If the word appears face up, then think of its meaning. When you start to have a lot of cards you can shuffle them and randomly pick out 10 or so every day.

6. Look for examples on the internet

Type the word in a search engine (such as Google) and write down 7 different sentences that contain an example of that word. This way you will see the word in context and maybe other vocabulary associated with it. For better results, look for one sentence every day over 7 different days.

7. Learn the word again on other days

Don’t just learn or practice a word one day and then forget about it. You may think you have learned the word (since you have just been using it) but if you try to remember/use the new word a couple of weeks later, you may find it difficult. To really remember a word you need to reuse that word over and over before it sticks in your long-term memory.

There is a saying in English “Use it or lose it.” Basically this means if you don’t use (or practice) something you have learned, you will eventually forget how to use it properly.

Reference:Woodward English

Homonyms - words

The words below are homonyms - words which look the same but may have different meanings and pronunciations. 

Most of the sentences feature the homonym both as a noun and as a verb. 
Which sentences do not?

1. The bandage was wound around the wound. 
2. The farm was used to produce produce. 
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 
4. We must polish the Polish furniture. 
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out. 
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present. 
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum. 
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. 
10. I did not object to the object. 
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. 
13. They were too close to the door to close it. 
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present. 
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line. 
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. 
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail. 
18. After a number of injections my jaw got number. 
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear. 
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

Can you find a rule governing their pronunciation and where to place the stress?

DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES

As the name suggests, defining relative clauses give essential information to define or identify the person or thing we are talking about. Take for example the sentence: Dogs that like cats are very unusual. In this sentence we understand that there are many dogs in the world, but we are only talking about the ones that like cats. The defining relative clause gives us that information. If the defining relative clause were removed from the sentence, the sentence would still be gramatically correct, but its meaning would have changed significantly.

Defining relative clauses are composed of a relative pronoun (sometimes omitted), a verb, and optional other elements such as the subject or object of the verb. Commas are not used to separate defining relative clauses from the rest of the sentence. Commas or parentheses are used to separate non-defining relative clauses from the rest of the sentence.

EXAMPLES

• Children who hate chocolate are uncommon.
• They live in a house whose roof is full of holes.
• An elephant is an animal that lives in hot countries.
• Let's go to a country where the sun always shines.
• The reason why I came here today is not important.

RELATIVE PRONOUNS

The following relative pronouns are used in defining relative clauses. These relative pronouns appear at the start of the defining relative clause and refer to a noun that appears earlier in the sentence.

	Person	Thing	Place	Time	Reason
Subject	who/that	which/that
Object	who/whom/that	which/that	where	when	why
Possessive	whose	whose

REPLACING WITH "THAT" IN SPOKEN ENGLISH

The pronouns who, whom, and which are often replaced by that in spoken English. Whom is very formal and is only used in written English. You can use who or that instead, or omit the pronoun completely. In the examples below, the common usage is given with the defining relative clause highlighted. The pronoun that would be used in more formal written English instead of that is given in parentheses.

EXAMPLES

• The dish that I ordered was delicious. (which)
• The man that came with her has already left. (who)
• The doctor that I was hoping to see wasn't on duty. (whom)

INCLUDING OR OMITTING THE RELATIVE PRONOUN

The relative pronoun can only be omitted when it is the object of the clause. When the relative pronoun is the subject of the clause, it cannot be omitted. You can usually tell when a relative pronoun is the object of the clause because it is followed by another subject + verb. See below, in the first sentence the relative pronoun cannot be ommitted because it is the subject of the relative clause ("the woman spoke"). In the second sentence, the pronoun can be omitted because "the woman" is the object of the verb "loved".

Noun, subject of the main clause	Relative pronoun	Verb + rest of relative clause	Verb + rest of main clause
The woman	that	spoke at the meeting	was very knowledgeable.
The woman	(that)	the man loved	was living in New York.

OTHER USES OF "THAT"

'That' is often used to introduce defining relative clauses when they follow the words something, anything, everything, nothing, all or a superlative. It may be omitted when it is not the subject of the clause.

EXAMPLES

• There's something (that) you should know.
• It was the best film (that) I've ever seen.
• Do you have anything that will help my throat?
• Everything (that) you say seems silly to me.
• Nothing (that) anyone does can replace my lost bag.
• I'm sorry, but that is all (that) I saw.

Ref: http://www.edufind.com/

Reporting sentences

Reporting different kind of statements

Put ‘that’ before the reported statement.

Use the reporting verb ‘said’ or ‘told’. Note that the verb ‘told’ should be followed by an object. The verb ‘said’ cannot be followed by an object.

Direct speech: Rohan said, ‘I like this music.’
Indirect speech: Rohan said that he liked that music.

Direct speech: Alice said, ‘James, I want you to attend the function.’
Indirect speech: Alice told James that she wanted him to attend the function. (NOT Alice said James…)

Reporting WH-questions

Omit the question mark.

Put the subject of the question before the verb.

Use a reporting verb like asked, requested, or wanted to know.
Put an object after the reporting verb.

Direct speech: ‘What are you doing?’ asked his father.
Indirect speech: His father asked him what he was doing. (NOT His father asked him what was he doing.)

Reporting Yes-No questions

Omit the question mark.

Introduce the reported question with whether or if.

Put the subject of the Yes-No question before the verb.

Use the reporting verb asked.

Direct speech: ‘Are you happy?’ he asked her.
Indirect speech: He asked her if she was happy.

Reporting imperative sentences

Put ‘to’ before the reported command or request.

Use a reporting verb like asked, told, ordered, requested, urged, advised or begged.

‘Alice, bring me a chair,’ said her father.
Alice’s father asked her to bring him a chair.

Ref: http://www.englishgrammar.org/